


Transfusions

by cookinguptales



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Angst, Extra Treat, Gen, Mild Blood, Vampires, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 03:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5113931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/pseuds/cookinguptales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tadashi had wanted to change the world, but not like this. Never like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transfusions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redblonde7 (dragons_and_angels)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragons_and_angels/gifts).



> Happy Halloween, redblonde7! I was intrigued by your vampire Tadashi prompt. I probably could have written a lot more about this, but I tried to keep this fic fun sized, so to speak. I hope you enjoy it.

The best nights, and the worst, were the nights he saw Hiro. Tadashi watched him from the shadows, and his eyes smiled even if his mouth didn't. Hiro was the same as ever, sweet and energetic and so, so stubborn. His friends had taken care of him, in a manner of speaking. Superheroing wasn't exactly the life Tadashi would have chosen for him, but Hiro took to it like a duck to water, and he had to admit that Hiro was saving lives. Once upon a time, Tadashi had wanted to do that, too. Before the fire.

The fire had burned away his skin, his life, his soul. The skin had grown back, sallow and shining in the moonlight. His life had returned to him second, a shock and a gasp, like waking up underwater and clawing to the surface. As for his soul... Tadashi wasn't sure if that was ever coming back. He could feel its absence inside him like a gaping hole, pulsing where his heart should have. He tried to fill it as best he could, but the attempts gnawed away at him, left him emptier than before. Secondhand souls were cold, he'd learned, and they were fleeting.

The first time, he hadn't even meant to do it. He'd been staggering out of the building (how had he gotten there?), confused and lost and so _hungry._ It wasn't until she was half-dead, quivering in his arms, that he realized what he'd done, what he'd become. The blood curdled in his stomach, halfway back to his veins, but it stayed down, no matter how he retched. She stayed down, too.

She had been the first, but not the last. Tadashi had programmed Baymax's diagnostic tools himself, and he knew exactly how much blood a human body could lose without being permanently harmed. He had no way of measuring how much he drank each time he grew weak, in mind and limb and absent soul, and fed again, but he knew that it was too much. Far too much.

Tadashi had wanted to change the world. Within a few weeks of doing so, all he'd wanted to do was leave it. But then he'd seen Hiro, sweet, stubborn Hiro, who was so full of life even when it was tearing him to pieces. He'd seen Hiro, and he'd seen what had been following him. Hiro had made it home safe. The thing that had been following him had not. And Tadashi had stood over it, drenched in blood that was not life, was not food, was only death. He'd made a decision that night. The creatures that crept through the night, reaching with too long fingers and too many teeth, would never touch his home, or what was left of it.

Hiro belonged in the sun, light glinting off of that ridiculous armor he'd fashioned for himself. He had no idea what lurked in the dark, and as long as Tadashi existed, it would stay that way. Tadashi watched him from the shadows, and his eyes smiled. But his teeth, sharp, too sharp, pricked at the insides of his lips, a reminder, and his mouth rested in a grim line. Hiro would never know about any of the predators that lined the night. Especially not him.


End file.
